Telephone test sets have long been used by telephone linesman to test and/or monitor operation of a telephone line. As is well known to those having skill in the art, a telephone test set generally includes a housing, often shaped like a telephone receiver, that includes a keypad, leads for connecting the telephone test set to the telephone line and a monitoring circuit for listening to the telephone line. Exemplary telephone test sets are generally discussed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,682,346 to Faith et al., 4,691,336 to Durston and U.S. Pat. No. 5,726,853 to Chavannes and, thus, need not be discussed further herein.
Recently, the number of features offered by telecommunications service providers in combination with telephone service has greatly increased. In particular, a telephone customer can choose from a list of options including, for example, caller identification, call return, call waiting, three way calling and the like. Accordingly, telecommunications service technicians may have to deal with more than inoperable telephone lines. In other words, a customer's telephone service may function properly, but one or more of the features selected by the customer may not.
The increased number of features offered by telecommunications service providers may further increase the number of service requests received by the telecommunications service technicians. The increased number of service calls may, for example, create problems associated with tracking which service requests have been completed and which service calls have not been completed. Furthermore, the existence of an increased number of service calls may possibly make it more difficult to respond to all of the service calls during daylight hours. Existing test equipment, for example, telephone test sets, may not be configured to address service issues presented by the increased number of features associated with telephone service. Accordingly, improved test equipment may be desired.